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We were eastbound on The Queensway, riding single file in the bicycle lane, when we just about lost poor Richard.

I saw the whole thing from about 10 metres back.

Wearing a bright green Toronto Parks and Recreation T-shirt, Richard was riding slowly along the left-side edge of the bike lane, gesturing at the rest of us to overtake him on the right, which we promptly started to do.

Just then, for no apparent reason and without checking over his shoulder, Richard veered sharply to the left and rode directly into the path of traffic roaring up from behind.

If you know The Queensway, you’ll know that it’s a four-lane arterial road, and the cars move pretty damned fast.

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At once, the driver of a large black sedan hit the brakes and the horn, hard, and somehow managed to swerve to the left, missing Richard by — I swear — centimetres. The squeal of his tires seemed to split the cool, mid-morning air.

Next, a black SUV did the same.

To his credit, Richard quickly recovered his balance. He got himself back into the bike lane and resumed waving at us, meaning we should continue passing him and ride on toward the foot of Roncesvalles Ave.

This we did, but the episode was not exactly a confidence-builder.

After all, Richard — surname, Anstett — was not just another student in this three-day course for advanced cyclists, called Can-Bike 2.

No, Anstett was our instructor, charged with schooling us in the safe operation of a bicycle. And this is a chronicle of the good, the bad and the parlous circumstances that unfolded earlier this month during three days of two-wheeled instruction on the often mean streets of Canada’s largest town.

Anstett’s brief brush with posterity was not the only mishap to occur during the intensive, 18-hour program, which is administered by the city parks department.

Luckily for him, Anstett did not wind up in the hospital, but one student, after a separate incident, did.

Both those episodes followed what had until then seemed to be the pedagogical low point of the course — the moment when Anstett and fellow instructor Len Dobrucki, both 63, somehow managed to collide while demonstrating a drill in the controlled operation of a bicycle, part of a course designed to impart the rudiments of safe, confident cycling in difficult urban conditions.

If you want
my opinion, there is no such thing as truly safe, confident cycling in difficult urban conditions, at least not in Toronto, not with the kind of cyclists, motorists and pedestrians we have here.

Instead, there are merely different gradations of risk and danger, all of which can undoubtedly be limited or reduced but will never disappear.

I’m probably not alone in thinking this way.

Just ask Jessica, a 20-something Torontonian who works for a city outreach program that aids the homeless. She was riding just ahead of me when Anstett very nearly deposited his earthly remains on a patch of The Queensway.

“Did you see what I saw?” she said a few moments later, as we pedalled on toward Roncesvalles. “I am so f---ing scared.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

After all, the Can-Bike 2 course is the most advanced and intensive of the many cycling instruction programs offered by the Toronto parks department during the spring and summer months.

By some interpretations of the provincial Highway Traffic Act, successful completion of Can-Bike 2 is a legal requirement for anyone in Ontario who is obliged to ride a bicycle as a condition of his or her employment. (Bicycle couriers: please take note.)

Members of the Metro Toronto police bicycle patrol are required to pass the course, although they apparently use their own police instructors instead of the civilian personnel at the parks department.

For my part,
I enrolled because I thought it might make a good newspaper story at an ideal time of year — the approach of summer — while also providing publicity for a program that ought to be much better known.

I also had personal reasons.

I don’t own a car and instead rely on my bike as my principal means of locomotion, at least during good weather. Most days, I cycle back and forth to work — a bracing, 30-minute ride in each direction and a great source of exercise and pleasure.

There’s just one problem.

Rarely does a day go by that I don’t have at least one close call on the road, usually caused by a motorist but often by another cyclist and not infrequently by my own ignorance or inattention.

I thought the course might help to remedy the situation — and I definitely believe it has, despite some wobbles along the way.

On the whole, I’m extremely glad I took Can-Bike 2. I wish every cyclist would.

Designed primarily by the Ontario Cycling Association, the course is a triumph of sanity, common sense, logic and consistency — all commodities that are just a wee bit lacking on the streets of this city.

Eleven students signed up for my particular iteration of the course, which began on a Monday in May, continued on a Wednesday, concluded on a Friday. It cost $112.

With one exception — me — all the students were in their 20s. Most were city employees involved in programs that will require them to ride bicycles as a function of their jobs.

About one-third of the course’s duration was devoted to indoor lectures and demonstrations, all conducted in the brick-walled clubhouse near the tennis courts at Rennie Park, a shady green oasis in the city’s west end, near Bloor St. and Runnymede Rd.

The rest of the course unfolded outdoors, either in the parking lot at Rennie Park or on extended rides along some of the most challenging routes in the city, those riddled with streetcar tracks, for example, or severely disrupted by construction, or pestered by heavy or fast-moving traffic.

The instructors — Dobrucki and Anstett — are both highly experienced cyclists as well as semi-retired individuals who have been teaching Can-Bike 2 for several years on a part-time basis.

But the course
is not well known to the public at large, and demand is correspondingly low. As a result, it is offered only infrequently, which may well explain some of the flubs that marred the program in my case.

“This is the only course I’ll teach this year,” said Dobrucki. “There’s just not that much demand. There’s not enough publicity.”

That’s a shame, because this kind of instruction is surely needed in Toronto.

Merely consider the cycling practices endemic to this city — the weaving in and out of traffic, the running of red lights, the riding on sidewalks, the riding on crosswalks, the failing to signal, the failing to shoulder-check before changing lanes, not to mention countless other transgressions — and you have to ask yourself a few troubling questions:

A. Whatever happened to the rule of law in this town?

B. What do most cyclists use for brains? and

C. When did the human instinct for self-preservation go so completely out of fashion?

I like to think of myself as a reasonably careful and confident cyclist, but I was startled during the three-day course to learn just how much I had been doing wrong, without ever suspecting it.

Like most other cyclists in this city, I rode much too close to the curb (you should leave a metre between your bike and whatever is on your right — either the curb or parked cars).

At red lights, I crept ahead in the narrow space between the traffic lined up on my left and whatever was on my right (this is both stupid and dangerous and achieves nothing good, merely forcing those cars to pass you all over again).

I often failed to signal before I changed lanes and neglected to check over my shoulder a second time (a manoeuvre known for good reason as a lifesaver shoulder check). And I typically weaved my way in and out of the spaces between parked cars, a practice that made me both less visible and less predictable to motorists.

Those attributes — visibility and predictability — are among the four central goals promoted by Can-Bike 2. The others are manoeuvrability and communication.

The course also encourages cyclists to take more control over what happens on the road, to be more assertive.

Here’s an example. If you, the cyclist, should decide that a certain stretch of road is too narrow for vehicles to overtake you safely from behind, then you can and should take possession of the entire lane by riding in the middle.

Not only is this perfectly legal, it also does a service to motorists by relieving them of the responsibility of deciding what is safe and what is not.

Instead, you should decide and then communicate that decision to others.

“I can guarantee you’ll be a better cyclist at the end of this course,” said Dobrucki on Day 1. “You’ll have more confidence. You’ll be able to assert yourself on the road.”

Despite some problems, he turned out to be right.

Granted, my younger fellow students and I had to cope with the inevitable dweeb factor that seems to attach itself to people who do sensible things while riding bicycles.

There we were, a group of cyclists all proceeding in single file, all with our helmets perfectly adjusted, all making the required hand signals (left turn, right turn, slow down), all calling out to each other about hazards on the road, whether potholes, broken glass or other debris.

Let’s face it: this is not the way Toronto cyclists are supposed to behave.

At times, I felt as if I’d awakened in the middle of a Walt Disney movie, surrounded by unfailingly courteous young people — chronic do-gooders who follow all the rules, all the time.

It felt surreal.

Almost wherever we went, pedestrians turned and stared at us, obviously befuddled by this most unfamiliar of urban spectacles — cyclists actually obeying the laws of the road, not to mention the invisible guidelines of common sense.

When not confronting the dweeb factor out on the street, we spent considerable time practising emergency manoeuvres in the Rennie Park parking lot. These included threshold stops, rock dodges and instant turns. All were new to me.

I also learned that you should brake your front wheel considerably harder than your rear, especially in an emergency. I’d always thought it was the other way around.

“I found the course definitely educational,” said Katherine Brown, 22, one of the 11 participants. “Before, I wasn’t so aware of all the perils.”

Foremost
among those perils is the notorious “door prize” — a quaint term used to describe the unexpected and inevitably painful convergence of a cyclist and the just-opened door of a parked car.

“When you’re in the city, probably the most dangerous thing is car doors opening,” said Dobrucki.

To limit that danger, you should stay a metre away from parked cars, keep a careful watch out, reduce velocity, refrain from weaving between parked cars, and keep your fingers on your brakes.

The second most common hazard in this city is probably streetcar tracks, and they snagged at least two of the participants in my course.

James was lucky. His bicycle flew out from under him while we were riding along Adelaide St. through a heavy construction zone, but he somehow managed to stay upright and keep going.

Angela was less fortunate.

After the course broke up early on Day 2 (owing to heavy rain and lightning), she was riding homeward along College St. with several other students when she wandered into the groove of a streetcar track and flipped.

More scared then hurt physically, Angela was soon loaded onto a stretcher and bundled away in an ambulance, suffering a sore neck and a bruised knee, injuries serious enough that she had to drop out of the course.

She did not show up on Day 3, the same day Richard Anstett almost met his maker on The Queensway.

“I was moving to the left without making a shoulder check,” he admitted later. “I didn’t realize the car was that close. That’s a good example of why the shoulder check is so critical.”

It’s also a good example of how everyone makes mistakes, no matter how experienced or competent they are.

For much of Day 3, we wound our way through the streets of downtown Toronto, exploring the complexities and challenges of riding bikes in a city built for cars. Meanwhile, the two instructors graded us on our performance.

That afternoon, we rode back to Rennie Park to write a 45-minute multiple-choice exam.

To pass the course,
we were each required to earn a grade of at least 70 per cent on both the on-bike test and the written exam, but many of us did much better than that.

In my case, I received a grade of 90 per cent for the on-road test and 91 per cent for the indoor exam — good enough not only to pass the course but also to qualify as a Can-Bike instructor-candidate.

In their written remarks, the instructors praised my confidence, technical skill and experience.

I don’t say this to boast but to demonstrate what an idiot I am — what idiots we all are, eventually.

On my triumphant ride home that day (just think: instructor-candidate!), I made a careless misjudgment at an admittedly confusing intersection — where Dundas and Roncesvalles fork just south of Bloor — and I nearly got run over by a jerk in a black pickup truck.

It was my fault. I made a mistake.

Next morning, I went out for a walk and, two blocks from my home, I came upon a young woman sprawled in the middle of Dundas St. after flipping off her bike. Those streetcar tracks again.

The police and the paramedics were already there, and I watched them load her into the ambulance and cart her away.

I guess she made a mistake, too. Sooner or later, everybody does.

But I recommend Can-Bike 2 all the same. You’ll still make mistakes — just not as many.

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